Recently I received a box of 9—nine!—of the so-called “juveniles” Heinlein did for Scribner’s in the 1940s and ’50s. These included Double Star, Farmer in the Sky, Have Space Suit—Will Travel, Red Planet, Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, The Star Beast, Starman Jones, and Time for the Stars.

All of them were in quite decent condition, with most actually appearing to have been unread. Except for some minor shopwear, the only problem was that there was some old label-type sticky gunk on the back of one, and it peeled up some of the cover of Red Planet, which was indeed exceedingly annoying...

The artwork included 7 nice Darrell K. Sweet covers, one by Lee Rosenblatt—a funky early-1970s-looking Starman Jones—and an uncredited Farmer in the Sky. Do I have other copies of these books with covers of very close variation? Yes. But do I like to maintain a pretty sizable Heinlein collection? Yeah...

Recently I picked up a nifty old Space Cadet with lovely cover and interiors by Clifford N. Geary, plus the two issues of Boys’ Life that serialized the story “Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon” in 1949. These magazines are harder to come by than more usual ones like Astounding, I would say, and the interior illustrations happen to be quite nicely rendered.

Now the art from these pieces all is scanned, and posted to the appropriate pages in my huge Heinlein Cover Art galleries.

Today I received an old library copy of The Star Beast, complete with checkout stamps in the back from the late 1950s. The piece is a tad banged up around the edges, but they bound these babies quite solidly back then. No matter what, though, the book has a gorgeous colorful cover by Clifford Geary, and a nice black-and-white frontispiece illustration.

It was a great find...and now it is scanned, and posted to the appropriate page of my Heinlein cover art galleries.

Today I just received a nifty old hardcover Farmer in the Sky in the mail. The inside back flap of the dust jacket lists the juvies up through Have Space Suit--Will Travel, meaning that this is a printing from 1958 or after, rather than being a first edition of 1950. Nevertheless, it really is nice indeed, and it has a beautiful cover by Clifford N. Geary, along with a number of cool black-and-white interior illustrations.

A couple of days ago I received the beautiful Earle Bergey-covered October 1947 Thrilling Wonder Stories containing Heinlein’s “Jerry Was a Man,” the 8 February 1947 Saturday Evening Post with “The Green Hills of Earth,” and the September and October 1951 Blue Book with Between Planets serialized as Planets in Combat—these latter each also contained 8 or 10 lovely interior illustrations by Brendan Lynch.

Yesterday I got a nice vintage Door into Summer with a charmingly bold cover by Mel Hunter.

Then today a few newer paperbacks arrived: a British Assignment in Eternity with an interesting techno-treehouse sort of cover, a Rick Sternback Starman Jones, and a Man Who Sold the Moon with a bright and mildly humorous John Melo painting.

All now are scanned to the appropriate pages in my “Heinlein Cover Art” galleries, so now you may enjoy, too!

Today in the mail came a lovely old hardcover of Starman Jones I had ordered. Although the novel was published in 1953, this particular copy dates from at least 1958, as the listing of Heinlein’s work on the inside includes Have Space Suit—Will Travel. I doubt it’s any later, though. The thing is beautifully illustrated by Clifford N. Geary, not only with the richly colored cover art but also with a whopping 7 black-and-whites inside.

This old high school library text has had solid use over the years, but it was specifically made for hard duty, and the binding allowed me to scan the interiors very fully, in a way a paperback would not have. After a couple hours of work, everything is scanned, saved, and posted to the “Scribner’s YA/Juveniles” page of my Heinlein cover art.

I had always heard that the early editions of Red Planet (1949) had a map of Percival Lowell’s conception of Mars, complete with his imagined canals—a conception of great cultural influence from the 1890s on, and one which was not yet 100% discredited by the 1940s, actually.

Finally I have acquired one of these lovely old books, and although it has no dust jacket and hence is a tad plain on the cover, the Clifford Geary “scientific”-type art under both front and back covers is absolutely gorgeous. Now, of course, these have been scanned, then posted to my “Scribner’s YA/Juveniles” page.

By happenstance I realized that I had forgotten to look under the dust jacket of my library edition of Space Cadet, so in doing this I discovered the Clifford N. Geary art stamped there, which I scanned, and then posted to the Scribner’s YA/Juveniles section of my Heinlein Cover Art galleries.

Somehow, though, this also reminded me I might have some anthologies on the shelf that have Heinlein stories, and hence should be scanned. To my pleasant surprise, I found five, including the great old wartime Pocket Books volume at left, so now they are scanned, and posted to Collections.

I was up in Frankenmuth for a conference for a couple of days, and on my way in I stopped at a couple of junk/antique joints, where I got four Heinlein paperbacks: two nice Scribner's with Darrell K. Sweet covers, a Vincent Di Fate Man Who Sold the Moon, and a John Melo Green Hills of Earth. All now are posted to their appropriate pages in my Heinlein Cover Art galleries.

I was poking through an antique mall down the road, and I’m sure glad I was, for I happened upon a first edition of a library copy of Heinlein’s first book for Scribner’s--Rocket Ship Galileo of 1947. It’s a solid hardcover, presumably made without a dust jacket for the rigors of school library traffic; presumably it saw a decade or two of service in the Valley Farms School Library here in Lansing—as this is what the stamp on the title page says—but the dealie that formerly held the checkout card on the last page unfortunately has been removed long ago.

In any event, this book is a specimen in rather good condition, considering that it’s just short of 70 years old, and it it also contains four decent black-and-white interior drawings by a fellow named Thomas W. Voter. Cover and interiors of course have been scanned and posted to the appropriate page in my galleries.